A dozen questions sprang to Phobar's lips. He felt again that he was being treated like a child. "Why do you want our radium ores?" "Because they are the rarest of the elements on your scale, are absent on ours, and supply us with some of the tremendous energy we need." "Why don't you obtain the ores from other worlds?" "We do. We are taking them from all worlds where they exist. But we need yours also." Raiders of the universe! Looting young worlds of the precious radium ores! Piracy on a cosmic scale! "And if Earth refuses your demand?" * * * * * For answer, Garboreggg rippled to a wall of the room and pressed a button. The wall dissolved, weirdly, mysteriously. A series of vast silver plates was revealed, and a battery of control levers. "This will happen to all of your Earth unless the ores are given us." The titan closed a switch. On the first screen flashed the picture of a huge tower such as Phobar had seen in the metal city. Garboreggg adjusted a second control that was something like a range-finder. He pressed a third lever--and from the tower leaped a surge of terrific energy, like a bolt of lightning a quarter of a mile broad. The giant closed another switch--and on the second plate flashed a picture of New York City. Then--waiting. Seconds, minutes drifted by. The atmosphere became tense, nerve-cracking. Phobar's eyes ached with the intensity of his stare. What would happen? Abruptly it came. A monstrous bolt of energy streaked from the skies, purple-blue death in a pillar a fourth of a mile broad crashed into the heart of New York City, swept up and down Manhattan, across and back, and suddenly vanished. In fifteen seconds, only a molten hell of fused structures and incinerated millions of human beings remained of the world's first city. Phobar was crushed, appalled, then utter loathing for this soulless thing poured through him. If only-- "It is useless. You can do nothing," answered the ruler as though it had grasped his thought. "But why, if you could pick me off the Earth, do you not draw the radium ores in the same way?" Phobar demanded. "The orange-ray picks up only loose, portable objects. We can and will transport the radium ores here by means of the ray after they have been mined and placed on platforms or disks." "Why did you select me from all the millions of people on Earth?" "Solely because you were the first apparent scientist whom our cosmotel chanced upon. It will be up to you to notify your Earth governments of our demand." "But afterwards!" Phobar burst out aloud. "What then?" "We will depart." "It will mean death to us! The solar system will be wrecked with Neptune gone and Saturn following it!" * * * * *